one of the many things i love about severance is that it just leaves it to you to figure out their inner-worlds but doesn't make it particularly difficult either. not that i hate more cerebral things but it feels nice to see something perfectly walk that line.

• helly r / helena eagan

her pure desire to figure out what's going on around her & pursue her loves (in this case, mark) is contrasted with finding her way through hellish surroundings.

what makes her character so absolutely brilliant is that after the reveal at the end of season 1 & a lot of season 2, it becomes very obvious that her time on the severed floor is allegorical for the events of her real life & how she has navigated them (as it is for everyone but for her it is particularly genius with how it clicks into place)

"history lives in us, whether we learn it or not"

being born into the heart of the lumon grooming cult as somebody who did not naturally fit into it & did not want to, she likely tried her best to rebel & escape & maybe even tried to kill herself like she did on the severed floor.

we know that her father sees genuine emotion as "the fire of kier" and his goal is to turn that emotion into a passion for slave-driving at the helm of lumon, so these genuine attempts to escape likely only made her life WORSE!!! poor fucking helly. the end result of his pressure is an unideal outcome for both of them (obviously?).

they are both trapped by eachother, but helly contorts around this & chooses to play the cards that have been given to her because the prospect of their being no escape makes her so fucking miserable that it's easier to just give in and lose herself for 8 hours a day, until she can be in private & do whatever she wants like think about the man she loves. meanwhile, her poor father doesn't quite get the satisfaction of grooming another eagan into being a sadist as his father did to him.

does the idea of wanting to lose yourself 8 hours a day sound familiar? does it make sense why she'd want to sever beyond just fitting her role/achieving corporate advertising/cold harbour now?

• seth milchik

like everyone else, he's somebody who doesn't really want to be where they are but has been forced there regardless & is just trying to make the best of hell.

he aspires to be the slave-driver, to wield the authority that has likely pushed him into the box he's in since childhood, to exert the power & authority he gave & command the respect that was milked out of him. but he doesn't fucking get it. he just doesn't. nobody takes his overly serious yet silly character seriously because he is so fucking artificial in his every action that despite being driven by a clear goal & passion that should be exactly what lumon wants, it's so apparent there is no real passion behind any of it.

to be the slave driver is not a genuine want for him: it is a learned want, from the years of abuse he faced at lumon. what is there for the flea in the jar to do but jump at the lid the best he can, even if by jumping higher he could push it out & escape? why would he want to escape when it's all he is?

lumon's goons are caught in a lie: they are told that to want is a sin & that their genuine wants should be discarded, & that they need to genuinely want to be the perfect lumon goon to be the ideal. seth can never be the perfect slave driver because he was taught that wanting anything is childish.

for seth, like most of lumon's employees, this does not spur on a genuine desire to work for the company in him. it spurs on a desire to survive by working for them. which is why even when he's a manager of the severed floor & achieving what should be his ideal, he's antagonised and practically othered by his coworkers.

there are two kinds of loyal dogs: the one that loves their master's hand, & the one that fears it.

• dylan

living a half existence; motivated by nothing genuine inside you but the desire to chase stupid fleeting pleasures like pencil erasers & finger traps, desperately wishing that there was just something infront of you for you to do & you didn't have to choose anything for yourself, because there's nothing inside you to choose.

it's genuinely so fucking wrenching & moving simultaneously to watch dylan essentially re-introduce himself to his wife, to watch her learn that the man inside the man she loves is also a man she loves, but the man she loves doesn't know that because he doesn't even know that man himself so he automatically gets jealous when she falls in love with him because he doesn't even fucking recognise himself. FUCK.

it's even more compelling to watch dylan begin to be motivated by real feeling & to see that give him drive to action. standing against seth, caring for irving, all not possible without him reconciling with the person he is inside. it sounds simple but it is quite cerebral in the presentation since the show never really lingers on dylan but i love that it trusts you to figure it out yourself & doesn't baby the audience.

• irving & burt

both want to forget the terrible atrocities they know they've contributed to. they want to do something better with their lives. for 8 hours a day they want to be innocent again. not a spy & soldier who was never loved. not a murderer who could never love himself. just drowning in work & pointless rules. unfortunately for them; love isn't kind enough to wait for a good time.

it's just heart wrenching that they won't allow themselves to be together so long as they don't confront that their "innies" are a part of them they shouldn't escape. you can't exactly love someone wholely all the time if you're not whole for most of the day! PLEASE GOD JUST LET THEM UNDERSTAND THAT AND MARRY ALREADY.

• harmony cobel

her arc is VERY much a slow burner but you can tell there's something wrong with her from the start. again, only with sweet vitriol's insight into lumon's grooming do we understand her religious fanaticism towards lumon & kier.

like seth, she's caught in the lie, but unlike him she doesn't have it in her to cling to it. probably because she's seen first hand how it destroys everything & leaves people with nothing but lumon's leash around their neck, malice & resentment.

her genuine love for mark & interest in his daily life is the driving force for her leaving. eventually, lumon realises that her genuine desire has shifted towards a love for something other than kier and she's "let go".

grooming someone from birth and then firing them like a corpo when they no longer think only about you. what a great company. i love corporations!

this event is so traumatic for her that it causes her entire life to unravel, it means she finally faces the demon that's been beaten into her; the dogma & programming of lumon. her search for the blueprints she made is a very literal search for a physical acknowledgment of the harm they've caused her before she can finally set herself free.

when she does, what a fucking triump that is! she's one of the best characters in this cast, so intricately written & interesting to churn around. i love that she still talks like that after she's not one of lumon's slaves anymore. so charming in its own weird way. i love this show.

• mark

his emotional core not only is one of the best written in the show (next to helly who's in #1 probably) but one of the most universally relatable. everyone has something they would want to escape. everyone in the cast does, atleast, but for mark it is immediate, it is obvious and it is fucking VISCERAL. to some extent his grief for gemma can be empathised with solely through how distant all the shots with him feel when he is at the peak of his misery as an outie near the start of the show. i just get it. mark my man i'm so sorry.

i think that he's loved so universally by the cast, sometimes romantically, because of how immediately understandable his grief & need for escapism is to the people around him who are also choosing to drown themselves out.

seeing a part of yourself in a character & then seeing that character grow only makes their journey all the more rewarding which i think the writers are very aware of. this entire show is like gently leading a horse out of a stable it imagined for itself & mark is the perfect self-insert for the audience to immediately be invested.

again, the character of mark works because nobody in the audience watching is perfect. we've all avoided pain, hid from our problems, wished we could be someone who didn't make those mistakes. mark serves as an emotional centre & a clear, resounding trumpet of the message of severance: please live your fucking life as your full self before it is taken from you.

the end of cold harbour is one of the best ever & it just works so well for his character. everything he does, messy & unhealthy or not, is for love; so of course when you put love infront of him, what do you think he'll pick over any kind of logic? it hurts so much but it brings me even more of a sick satisfaction to just see how well written he is. what an achievement.

i'd also like to quickly say that every single performance in severance should be given every award etc etc, they're all amazing and it takes real skill & love for your craft to display such nuanced characterisation so effortlessly. who knew christopher walken's resting face could be so gay?

as for the camera part of the title? i don't watch films for the filmmaking, so believe me when i tell you that the filmmaking on display in severance is on its own enough for me to have watched the entire thing. go watch ben stiller talk about the opening shot for s2e1 on youtube. it's crazy. the marching band too!!!!

this show is a generational achievement in every regard & i hope i got that across to you. thanks so much for reading love you bye